The Man Who Invented Fiction review – what we owe to Cervantes

Recent high-profile studies have claimed that reading fiction can help strengthen empathy, and improve theory of mind.)

.. The splitting of perspectives – experiencing this “fiction” from within and without, with a multiplicity of differing understandings of the world – allowed Cervantes to explore moral questions without ever being moralistic; and it allowed him, too, to get past any censor on the lookout for seditious anti-national or anti-religious messages in an increasingly controlling state.